Build a Home for Former Child Beggars in India

Back in November, on Giving Tuesday, we did something we hadn’t done before. We launched a month long campaign, with a target fundraising goal and deadline, in order to kick start our fundraising to build a new home and tuition centre for the children of My Name is Kumar.

We did better than we ever expected – we received a total of 166 donations and so far have raised over $16,000. As a result of your generous giving we also won two prizes from GlobalGivingUK which resulted in an additional £1,500 in bonus funding. We hope all of you received our initial thank you email but we would like to say thank you one more time for your amazing generosity and support.

The ‘Build4Kumar’ project is well underway, with a dedicated team working to make it a success. Right now we are in the process of vetting a number of different sites for the build. To do this we are working with a local, independent third party who is advising us on each site’s pros and cons. We are looking for a piece of land very close to our current base, which is both close to the Londor community (the begging community we work with) and the children’s school. This piece of land must both comply with local and national child welfare standards and with our own requirements and is therefore a vital and step in this project.

Thanks to introductions made by friends and volunteers in India we will soon be meeting with a prospective architect: a woman who has recently finished a project in which she designed and oversaw the building of a sustainable school in Tamil Nadu. This is an initial meeting but we hope that it could be the start of a working partnership.

Our current self-imposed deadline is to have made a decision on land purchase by the end of March. Then from there it will be all hands on deck to begin the design and build of the new home. Additional members of our team will be travelling to India over the summer to assist with work.

This is a huge project, so in addition to our individual fundraising which you have all been a part of, we continue to apply to a number of grant providers to enable us to raise the rest of the necessary funds. We have already been successful with our applications to a few grant giving organisations, but we would always appreciate any recommendations you have for funds that support this kind of project. If you can think of something we should investigate, please email henry@mynameiskumar.org .

We look forward to updating you in another couple of months on the progress of ‘Build4Kumar’. In the meantime stay tuned and watch our Facebook and blog for more news on the progress of all our other projects and the children in our care.

Thanks once more!

Links:

• Details on the 'Build4Kumar' project